Elio di Supo |
30 september 2020 04:43 |
Racism 1.0, racism 2.0 and racism 3.0
Citaat:
Like others, the Merriam-Webster dictionary has, up to now, given us what we might consider the 1.0 definition of racism, the one we would cite for the curious child. That is, what used to be referred to as prejudiced: “a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.”
Since the 1960s, however, racism has often been used in terms such as societal racism and institutional racism, referring to structures of society that disadvantage people of subordinated races because of the collective effect of bigoted attitudes. For example, one might say that societal racism is to blame for neighborhoods with decaying infrastructure, because white flight lowered tax revenues.
John McWhorter: Racist is a tough little word
These terms have naturally often been shortened to just racism, such that the word has acquired a 2.0 definition. Merriam-Webster captures this as well, noting that racism can mean “a political or social system founded on racism.”
However, Kennedy Mitchum, 22 and just out of college, wrote a message to the editors at Merriam-Webster asking them to expand the definition to account for usage that has morphed even beyond the 2.0 definition to refer to “social and institutional power.” Mitchum noted that racism “is a system of advantage based on skin color.”
Here, the focus of the definition is less on attitudes than results: The societal disparities between white people and others are themselves referred to as racism, as a kind of shorthand for the attitudinal racism creating the disparities. This 3.0 definition of the word is now quite influential, such that the best-selling author and Atlantic contributor Ibram X. Kendi calls all race-based societal disparities racism that ought to be battled. It is a usage of racism that one often acquires in college classes in the social sciences, and that is fundamental to modern discussions of race and racism. For example, many people would say that the fact that, on average, black students do not perform as highly on standardized tests as white students means that the tests are racist, in that they disadvantage black students.
Mitchum was frustrated by people telling her, in debates about racism, that her 3.0 definition was erroneous given that it wasn’t “what’s in the dictionary.” Her frustration was justified. She wasn’t creating her own definition of the word—it is shared by legions of people, especially educated ones, across our nation.
Conor Friedersdorf: When using ‘racist,’ define your terms
Dictionaries can lag behind societal developments, and the idea that a “word” indisputably “means” what dictionaries say is simply sloppy. Words’ meanings change inevitably and constantly, and not just in terms of slang. Anyone who doubts that might take a listen to how people use the word fantastic in old episodes of The Twilight Zone or old movies, when they meant not “Great!” but what we would now express as “fantastical.” The change was gradual. But here, in the real, non-fantastical world, people tend to think that the cold print of dictionaries implies some kind of unchanging truth. As such, it won’t do for definitions of words as crucial as racism to sit frozen somewhere around the era of Watergate and fondue. We’ve come a long way, baby.
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https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/ar...change/613324/
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